Daily catch-up: a murmuration; gay lib tactics; and Latin animal names

All you need to know about fauna, politics, commuting and trousers

1. Starlings above the fog photographed in Fife yesterday afternoon by Ben Dolphin.

2. I interviewed Michael Cashman for The Independent on Sunday yesterday. He was number 1 on our annual Rainbow List, which celebrates lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who have advanced the cause of equality.

One part for which we did not have space in the newspaper was where I asked him about Peter Tatchell, another hero of the equal rights cause of the past three decades. Tatchell, now promoted to the "House of Lords" of the Rainbow List, pursued a more confrontational approach to campaigning than Cashman, who helped found Stonewall, the Fabian gradualists of gay rights:

"Since Peter tried to arrest Robert Mugabe he rightly became a national hero. Peter and I used to fall out a lot in the past over tactics. I wasn’t in favour of outing bishops. I didn’t – I say this against myself – I wasn’t in favour of denouncing the Archbishop of Canterbury from the pulpit at Canterbury. But in the end it was the twin approaches of the gentle persuasion and reasonableness of Stonewall accompanied by Peter Tatchell and Act Up and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (that everyone forgets about)* that meant politicians and the Church and others either had to deal with Peter and the rest of them or deal with us. And they rushed into our arms. It was that twin approach.

"I’m now a patron of Peter’s foundation. Because – I like to think of this not in the biblical sense but in that of the Roman empire – all roads lead to Rome, so long as you want to go there."

Iain Dale has just written about Tatchell, and how he, Dale, belatedly came round to him but thinks that he hasn't adapted to the new environment.

*I had to look up the Sisters: a protest or consciousness-raising group that originated in San Francisco in 1979 with men dressed as nuns to use “irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit”.

3. A person who travels an hour to work has to earn 40 per cent more to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office. Via Conrad Hackett.

4. My Top 10 in The New Review, the Independent on Sunday magazine, is Latin Animal Names.

Peter A. Russell wanted to add Troglydites troglydites, the wren. Alastair Stewart said he always thought Rattus rattus had an "appealing simplicity about it". And John Dakin thought Bufo bufo (common toad) and Bufo calamita (natterjack toad) were good, too.

Also in The Independent on Sunday, I have written about the rise of the Green Party, another threat to Labour at the election next year.

And we had a ComRes opinion poll that finally asked the question: was it right or wrong for Ed Miliband to give money to the person begging in the street? The average response was 40 per cent right, 30 per cent wrong and 30 per cent don't know.

5. "Labour’s pitch is that everything in this country is screwed." Brilliant post by Eric Joyce, MP for Falkirk, on Miliband's miserablism, the Scottish National Party and (though I disagree with him on this) the mansion tax.

6. And finally, thanks to Moose Allain, who wins today's Twitter biography award ("Artist, etc. Dogsbody, but human head. Peripheral visionary. Pest."), for this:

"I'm wearing cords today, but when I want to roam about I put on my cordless trousers."